Source: Wikipedia

A US Navy Corpsman searches for Taliban fighters in the spring of 2005.

CPEC OBOR

It was a short report in the media, but it could be possibly a game changer in Afghanistan.
Russia, China and Pakistan agreed last week at a meeting in Moscow to remove selected
Taliban leaders from the UN sanctions list. The three countries had agreed on a “flexible
approach to remove certain persons from the UN sanctions list in order to foster a
peaceful dialogue between Kabul and the Taliban movement”, said the spokesperson of
the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Sakharova.

The seemingly innocent sentence could well be the beginning of a new “Great Game”
over dominance in Afghanistan. Especially since one of the parties for this “peaceful
dialogue” had not even been asked: the Afghan government. Not surprisingly, Kabul was
not amused, although the group ensured their willingness to invite Afghanistan to their
next meeting.

“Discussions about the situation in Afghanistan without the involvement of Afghans are
not helpful and raise serious questions about the purpose of such meetings even if they
are well-meaning”, said Ahmad Shakib Mostaghni, spokesman of the Afghan Foreign
Ministry. He was not the only one to be concerned. For India, that has intensified its
engagement in Afghanistan in the last years, it is bad news that even its long-standing
friend Russia does not feel the need to consult with Delhi over bringing back the Islamic
extremists into power in Kabul.

Not surprisingly, the Taliban welcomed the suggestions of the troika. Russia, China and
Pakistan had understood that “the Taliban are a political and military force”. “The
proposal is positive step towards peace and security in Afghanistan”, says an official
statement of the radical-Islamic group.

As the main reason for their suggestion, the trilateral working group that met in this
constellation already for the third time cited “increased activities of extremist groups,
among them the Afghan branch of the Islamic State” (IS, also known as Daesh in
Afghanistan). A motive that is not totally unjustified, but many security experts doubt
that the Islamic State has really grown in Afghanistan.

Interpreted negatively, one could suspect that Russia, that has been successfully trying to
increase its international outreach by invading Crimea and supporting the Assad-regime
in Syria, tries to use the power vacuum created by the withdrawl of American troops and
insecurity over the future US policy in Afghanistan to spread its influence once again.

Shortly before the meeting, the Permanent Representative of Russia at the UN, Vitaly
Churkin had emphasized that “the elimination of Taliban leader Mullah Mansoor”
through an American drone attack this summer in Pakistan had worsened the situation in
Afghanistan by strengthening the influence of “irreconcilable radicals”.

Churkin also quoted the Commander of the NATO troops in Afghanistan, US-General
John Nicholson saying that the terror organisation IS tries to install a caliphate by the
name of Khorasan in the region using fighters of the “Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan”.

Apparently Russia also wants to block the removal of the Hesb-e-Islami leader Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar from the UN sanctions list. The Afghan government had signed a peace
agreement with the warlord in September 2016, effectively ending years of insurgency of
Hesb-e-Islami. One of the conditions of the agreement is to remove Hekmatyar’s name
from the UN sanctions list.

Read Also | India should overcome hesitation to play greater role in Afghanistan

In the past decades Russia, that still remembers the ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan in
1979 by the USSR and the following civil war, had shown little interest in engaging there
again. But this might well have changed. “Russia is questioning the US presence in its
backyard again” writes Indian journalist and security analyst Suhasini Haidar.

The announcement from Moscow therefore triggered furious comments in Kabul.

“Considering the fact that they owe our nation ethically, politically and humanely, and
also considering the fact that the destruction of Afghanistan goes back to the wrong
policies of the former USSR, we hope that the Russians compensate that human tragedy
instead of creating another tragedy and crisis”, said the former head of the National
Directorate of Security (NDS), Amrullah Saleh.

The strong wording clearly shows what it at stake for India. The Afghan government
counts on the country that has been emphasizing over and over again that it will not
abandon Afghanistan. But moral support and financial aid are clearly not enough
anymore. The question therefore arises what India can actually do.

Apparently India’s attempt to isolate Pakistan internationally has not only failed but even
backfired. While it is clear that Islamabad favours a government in Kabul with a strong
Taliban-representation, neither Russia nor China and also Iran are known as Taliban-
lovers. For them, an arrangement with the radical-Islamic group might well look as the
cheapest way to stabilise their backyard.

China had announced even earlier that it intends to engage stronger in Afghanistan
because it fears increased terrorist activities in the province of Xinjiang. The IS sees the
West of China, where about 20 million citizens are Muslims, as a part of its caliphate. But
it has been rather unclear so far what Beijing really wants to do in Afghanistan.

Given this insecurity and obvious lack of strategy, it remains questionable if a new axis
“Moscow-Beijing-Islamabad” will contribute to peace in the region. Pakistani
participants of the meeting in Moscow indicated that Russia is interested in including
Tehran in the talks. The director of the Pakistan-based think tank “Centre for Research
and Security Studies” (CRSS), Imtiaz Gul rightly asks: “Is this the beginning of a new
geo-political game with two obvious blocs (India-Afghanistan-USA and Moscow-
Beijingt-Islamabad and Iran)?”

The US government has not officially commented on the developments. It is also unclear
what course the President-elect Donald Trump will embark on in Afghanistan. The
NATO spokesman in Afghanistan, US-Brigadier General Charles Cleveland told the
Afghan station “Tolo TV”: ‘We are concerned about the Russian engagement with the
Taliban because it gives them legitimacy. We believe that all our efforts in the region
should aim at strengthening the Afghan government.” He added that he did not observe
any increase in the activities of the Islamic State (IS) in Afghanistan.

India, that has been accusing its neighbour Pakistan of using the Taliban to install an
Islamabad-friendly government in Kabul for a long time is clearly worried. The convener
of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB), P. S Raghavan writes in a newsletter of
the think tank Ananta: “Russia’s overtures to the Taliban in Afghanistan could create
bilateral dissonance in an area of core importance to India.”

New Delhi has traditionally good relations with Moscow but also increased its
cooperation with the USA in the past few years. This has already cooled off the warm
relationship between the two countries to some extent. “In view of the currently limited
communication between India and Russia, Russia’s behaviour could lead to a further drift
of the countries”, warns Nandan Unnikrishnan, Russia-expert at the Observer Research
Foundation (ORF) in Delhi.

Next to Pakistan’s increasing influence in Afghanistan, New Delhi is also worried about
China’s growing activities in Pakistan in form of the “China-Pakistan-Economic-
Corridor” (CPEC), that is seen as an extension of the ambitious “One-Belt-One-
Road”(OBOR) initiative. The economic corridor that comprises of massive Chinese
investments in infrastructure in Pakistan intends to connect the city of Kashgar in the
Chinese province Xinjiang with the Pakistani port Gwadar. Apparently, at the trilateral
meeting in Moscow a Russian involvement in the corridor was also discussed.

Read Also | What CPEC means for South Asia

India reacted to the initiative already in summer 2016 by signing an agreement with Iran
for the development of the Iranian Chabahar port, where India plans to invest about 500
million US-Dollars. The port shall provide a transit route for Indian goods to Central
Asia, since Pakistan keeps on blocking the land-route to Afghanistan. This might give a
hint of what strategy India should contemplate.

While a constructive Russian engagement in the region, as well as a Chinese one does not
necessarily contradict India’s interest, bringing back the Taliban with the support of
Islamabad surely does. New Delhi therefore urgently needs to beef up its diplomatic
activity especially it’s communication with Moscow - and also Tehran.

True, these countries are interested in reducing American influence in their backyard. But
they are also interested in a stable Afghanistan that does not protect and nurture Islamic
terrorists. It should be not be too difficult to convince them, that ignoring the Afghan
government is a fall-back into the colonial “Great Game” that has thrown the region into
turmoil in the first place.

To believe that the Taliban are a good ally to overcome Islamic terrorism means setting a
fox to keep the geese. Moscow and Beijing are well advised to learn from Pakistan’s
disastrous engagement with radical groups to understand the meaning of the old Afghan
saying that “those who keep snakes in their backyard, will sooner or later be bitten”.

While some kind of peace arrangement with the Taliban needs to be achieved at a certain
point in time, Delhi should remind Moscow that there is no short-cut to stability by
allowing the Taliban to dominate Afghanistan again. It can also remind Moscow that the
USA are already on their way out and it is very unlikely that a President Trump will
change direction in this regard.

Therefore, a security concept and guarantee for Afghanistan that reflects the will of the
Afghan people and that includes Russia, Iran, China and India would be a great
achievement for the region. With these major players on board, the Afghans could very
well take care of the “state-building” and “nation-building” themselves.

(An earlier version of this article appeared in German in Swiss newspaper “Neue
Zuericher Zeitung” (NZZ). It can be found here)